Xoqoneb’: an Uspanteko Story from the Central Highlands of Guatemala

Xoqoneb’: An Uspanteko story from the central highlands of Guatemala Robert Henderson, Tomás Alberto Méndez López, Ryan Bennett, and Megan Harvey Narrated by Virgilio Tomás Méndez DRAFT 5/06/20 Abstract Uspanteko is one of the smallest and most threatened Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala. While Uspanteko belongs to the K’ichean branch of the Mayan family, it bears a striking number of linguistic features not seen in its sister languages, across major aspects of the grammar, including phonetics/phonology (i.e., lexical tone) and morphosyntax (i.e., null verbal inflection). After introducing an Uspanteko text about the sacred hill Xoqoneb’ and placing it in its cultural context, including surveying related Uspanteko texts, we use Xoqoneb’ to illustrate those aspects of the Uspanteko language which stand out relative to other K’ichean languages. We also comment on the possible sources of these divergent features, which include both language contact and innovation. 1 Introduction The text presented in this article, entitled Xoqoneb’, takes it name from a toponym for one of the four sacred hills that surround Tz’únun Kaab’ (San Miguel Uspantán) in the central highlands of Guatemala. It was related to us in 2019 by Virgilio Tomás Méndez in Jacubí, a neighborhood in the northwest corner of San Miguel Uspantán. This text was transcribed and translated by Mr. Méndez’s son, one of the co-authors of the present work. It describes an encounter between an Uspanteko man and the supernatural lord of the hill Xoqoneb’. The festival of San Miguel is approaching, but the man has no money for a costume to dance in the festivities. Sullenly, he goes to Xoqoneb’ to cut firewood and encounters its 1 supernatural lord, a giant who offers him a resplendent costume but swears him to secrecy about its origin. The costume is a hit at the festival, and the man’s friends pressure him to divulge how he got it. The man refuses, and so his friends conspire to get him drunk to loosen his tongue. In his drunkenness, the man breaks down and reveals that he got his costume from the lord of Xoqoneb’. But in breaking his word, the man invites retribution from the lord of Xoqoneb’. The anger of the hill is remembered in the community (e.g. [107]), and persists into contemporary popular culture. This is illustrated, for instance, by Xoqoneb’—Cerro Sagrado1, a short film by Cesar Aj in which a group of Maya teens go to the hill and encounter horrors, only to be saved when they stumble on a family in distinctive, traditional Uspanteko dress, who tell them to ask the hill for forgiveness, and to respect it going forward. This scene can be understood as a synthesis of the traditional Xoqoneb’ story, shared by Virgilio Tomás Méndez, and current community anxieties around the status of Uspan- teko language and culture. The San Miguel Uspantán area has seen a recent influx of K’iche’ speakers, continuing a trend which began in the 19th century and which intensi- fied during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996) (Us Maldonado no date:p. 59-60;117- 118;125-152). Most, if not all speakers of Uspanteko are also bilingual in K’iche’, and many Uspanteko families include ethnically K’iche’ family members through intermar- riage. K’iche’ is much more widely spoken than Uspanteko, with over 1 million native speakers—there are probably at most 4000 Uspanteko speakers—and children in the traditional Uspanteko-speaking area have begun to shift toward K’iche’. These changes have contributed to a sense that Uspanteko language and culture are under threat from demo- graphic changes in the region. Note that the Maya teens in Cesar Aj’s film wear contemporary, pan-Mayan dress (uq ‘corte’ and manufactured blouses for women, jeans and T-shirts for men)—in sharp contrast to the Uspantekos, wearing traditional garb, whose local wis- dom leads to the teens’ salvation. We might thus see Aj’s movie as an admonition that modern ‘outsiders’ (including K’iche’ immigrants) who do not speak Uspanteko should nonetheless honor Uspanteko cultural knowledge. or else! The focus on the anger of the hill Xoqoneb’, in both popular culture and informal retellings of its story, is notable. Stories with similar elements are found elsewhere in the department of Quiché, including in traditional K’iche-speaking communities (Telma Can Pixabaj, p.c.), as well as in other Maya communities, like the Awakateko speaking region of Aguacatán (e.g., Velásquez Velásquez & Solís 2005, Rodríguez Hernández & Rodríguez 2004, Rodríguez Pérez & Rodríguez 2004) But the version told here has a surprising final twist concerning the punishment issued by the hill, unique when compared to other versions of the story which are told in the Guatemalan highlands. In particular, 1https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ABbh421eGw 2 in these other stories, the protagonist is punished for revealing the secret. For instance, in La leyenda del cerro de las máscaras, the dancer is carried away into the wind and flown back to the mountain where he disappears (Rodríguez Hernández & Rodríguez 2004). In Wi K’ooj, the dancer dies and his soul become trapped in the moutain as payment for the costume (Rodríguez Pérez & Rodríguez 2004). In contrast, in Xoqoneb’, the entire community of Uspantán is punished for the dancer’s error, rather than just the man himself. Subterranean openings heading toward Rabinal and Cobán appear in B’a Kameb’ (Figs. 1-2), which sits on the face of another one of the sacred hills (Xo’l Eek’) that surround the community. The riches of Uspantán flee through those caverns, leaving Uspantán impoverished to this day [100-102]. 15.360 15.355 X 15.350 Latitude 15.345 BK 15.340 0 0.5 1km 15.335 -90.880 -90.875 -90.870 -90.865 -90.860 Longitude Figure 1: San Miguel Uspantán and locations mentioned in the text The geographical climax of the story is mirrored in one of the opening lines, when a townsperson says that the dancers must go to Quiché or Chichicastenango for their cos- tumes [12. These flanking lines situate the story, and Uspantán itself, in geographic, cultural, and linguistic space (Figs. 1-2). Santa Cruz del Quiché and and Chichicastenango are major K’iche’ cultural centers, with the former being the capital of the department of Quiché. Rabinal is in Baja Verapaz, where they speak Achi, a language closely related to K’iche’. Cobán is the capital of Alta Verapaz and is Q’eqchi’-speaking. The picture 3 of Uspantán we get in the story is a multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic one, where the city sits at the the crossroads of three departments (lamentably with its wealth going outward towards their capitals). Ixil region Cobán San Miguel Uspantán Santa Cruz Rabinal del Quiché Chichicastenango Guatemala City 0 50 100 km Figure 2: Guatemala and cities mentioned in the text Uspantán, a city at the crossroads, is a good metaphor for the Uspanteko language itself. The Uspanteko language diverged fairly early from Proto-K’ichean (Campbell 1977), and it is quite distantly related to the other Mayan languages spoken in the towns and cities referenced in the story. Indeed, assigning Uspanteko to a subgrouping withing the K’ichean languages is extremely difficult. Uspanteko seems to share some core features, like the existential predicate wi’ [7], with Poqom and Q’eqchi’. But still other core features, like the reflex of proto-Mayan *N > x, are shared instead with K’iche’ and Poqom, where Q’eqchi’ has *N > h (Law 2014:p. 36, 41). There are additional connections between Uspanteko and Poqom, for instance, post-nominal plural marking (especially for second 4 person) as well as post-predicate absolutive marking in non-verbal predicates (Campbell 1977:p. 71-72). While this might suggest that Poqom and Uspanteko belong to the same subgroup of K’ichean, the third person ergative agreement system of Poqom is similar to K’iche’-proper, but different from Uspanteko. Even worse, raw lexical statistics from a standard Swadesh list would seem to mistakenly suggest that Uspanteko is more closely related to the Mamean languages than the K’ichean languages, further complicating ba- sic subgrouping (Campbell 1977:p. 63). We even see evidence of Mamean borrowing in Uspanteko core vocabulary in this text, for instance, yol ‘to say’ in [91], and throughout. The truth, we think, is that Uspanteko is a language at the crossroads, having experienced sustained contact with its sister languages, Poqom, Q’eqchi’, and K’iche’, as well as languages like Ixil from the Mamean subgroup. In the rest of this short article we focus on aspects of Uspanteko grammar illustrated in the text, emphasizing those features which make Uspanteko unique among its K’ichean- branch sister languages. Whether these features are internal innovations, or instead a re- sult of contact with other Mayan languages—particularly those of the Mamean branch— remains an open question. We nonetheless point out some possibilities for contact-based sources for the distinctive linguistic properties of Uspanteko. Our ultimate goal is to situate the Uspanteko language and its speakers in the multilingual, multi-ethnic context in which they exist—as underscored by the story of Xoqoneb’ itself. 2 Tone system As described in Can Pixabaj 2007 and Bennett & Henderson 2013, Uspanteko has a tone system consisting of a privative [H]∼? contrast, with [H] tone restricted to the penultimate mora. High tone is indicated in the text with an accent on tonal vowels, V.´ 2 (1) a. ajxójol ‘bailador’ [12] b. K’íche’ ‘K’iche” [12] 2We use standard Mayan orthography.

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